03 January 2011

Mangroves at Chek Jawa

A huge clump of the very rare Mentigi (Pemphis acidula)! So far, I've only seen large stands of this Critically Endangered plant on our remote offshore islands! Unfortunately, the erosion on the shore is quite extreme and is undercutting the two plants at Chek Jawa.

Here's a closer look at the delicate looking Mentigi and its tiny white flowers.

Chay Hoon also showed me two tall Gedabu (Sonneratia ovata)! One of them was blooming furiously! But I couldn't find any fruits on the tree or on the ground. Many of the leaves of this Critically Endangered tree are also curled up.

Here is another special Bruguiera, the Lenggadai (Bruguiera parviflora). It is merely Endangered, and there are quite a few of these trees on Pulau Ubin. But this tree is so far the only one I know of on Chek Jawa. It is a very nice tall, straight tree.

It has long narrow flowers!

I could only find fallen flowers on the seaweed covered ground. No luck with finding propagules on the ground or in the tree.

The clump of Wax plant (Hoya sp.) that I've been seeing here since well before reclamation was deferred in 2001 is still there! And there was a tiny bunch of flowers but they were not open yet.

My favourite Nyireh batu (Xylocarpus moluccensis) is still here! It has lovely peg-like breathing roots. This tree is Endangered and Pulau Ubin has several of them. In fact, Pulau Ubin has really nice mangroves and we should go have a closer look at them soon!

The beautiful Delek air (Memecylon edule) trees on the coastal forest side were blooming! There are several of these Critically Endangered trees on Chek Jawa. They are also found on some of our other natural cliffs such as at Sentosa.

We had a quick walk through the mangrove boardwalk and there were lots of teeny tiny colourful fiddler crabs! Although they come in all kinds of patterns and colours, they all have red eyes on red eye stalks.

I saw a group of kayakers stop for a while at the Northern sand bar.

I also had a quick look at the state of the seagrasses at Chek Jawa. The seagrasses there seem to be bleaching! Oh dear. But the usual species remain present and the sand and seagrasses on the Northern sand bar seemed to have moved. More on the TeamSeagrass blog with a look too at the seabirds there and their poop! Want to join TeamSeagrass? Here's more details.

Want to see Chek Jawa?Join the FREE guided walk on the Chek Jawa boardwalk by the Naked Hermit Crabs. The next walk is on 8 Jan (Sat)!

free shore posters

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